This is an article I’ve wanted to write for a long time. I considered the subject to obscure until my special lady friend assured me that it was not. If you’ve ever been within 50 miles of a college campus you probably know who the International Socialist Organization are. They’re the obviously middle-class kids shilling a banal newspaper in really large type font who curl into a ball and start crying if you ask them a question harder than “but is socialism really possible / aren’t people naturally selfish / didn’t socialism fail in the Soviet Union?” If the ISO weren’t running around claiming to be socialists, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have any problem with them. If they just fessed up to the fact that they’re garden variety radical liberals who want good people to do good things in the world, I wouldn’t have the same level of hate for them. It’s their insistence that they represent some kind of political and theoretical continuity with hard as nails American socialists (or at least the popular ones everyone already knows about) and the first people to successfully overthrow capitalism that makes me rage at an almost uncontrollable level.

The History of an Anti-Communist Sect

I’m not the type of socialist who runs around ranting about being a communist, insisting on red banners, hammers and sickles, and bizarre, pseudo-religious pictures of Lenin and Trotsky everywhere. But you will not find a group on the left more neurotically fearful of the term “communist” than the International Socialist Organization. To find out why this is, and to assess the generally populist, conservative (in the general sense, not the political sense) bent of their politics and rhetoric, one must go way back to the late-40s and the Korean War.

It was in the late 1940s, during what was arguably the greatest period of reaction and anti-communist fervor that Tony Cliff happened upon a convenient theory entirely new to the Trotskyist movement of which he was at that time a part. The Soviet Union and its buffer states were not, as Trotsky and his followers maintained, degenerated and deformed workers’ state, respectively. They represented new class relations, namely a new form of capitalism which Cliff called state capitalism.

Cliff’s claim was not new. It had previously shown up in a slightly different form called bureaucratic collectivism, which Trotsky spent the last year or so of his life fighting tooth and nail. Cliff’s theory ignores a number of key differences between the Soviet Union and every other capitalist state. For example, there was no market in the Soviet Union, the means of production were owned collectively, workers had a right to a job and health care, and there was a monopoly on foreign trade. Further, “Soviet Imperialism” does not resemble Imperialism as Lenin defined it an any way whatsoever. The Soviet Union certainly took over other countries with its armies, but in a highly reluctant fashion. They also did not export finance capital to these countries, rather they literally loaded what little productive capital was left onto trains and took it back to the Soviet Union. Finally, the Soviet Union did something that no capitalist country has done since the days of Napoleon- it (again, very reluctantly, and for their own interests) allowed workers to carry out tightly controlled, highly bureaucratized social revolutions which ended capitalism.

But if you need any proof that capitalism was abolished, just ask people in the former Warsaw Pact countries how life has been for them since the fall of the workers’ states there. Quick answer: not so fuckin’ good.

Facts rarely seem to matter to ISO members. The emotional reaction of their petty-bourgeois upbringing counts for much more. For example, they have no response to the fact that Trotsky supported the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union because it would bring the socially progressive property forms of the Russian Revolution to Poland. They have nothing to say when you confront them with the fact that their ideological forebearers became rabid anti-communists while the faction supporting so-called “Orthodox Trotskyism” died socialists. This is trivia to the ISO, as is the fairly obvious historical connection between anti-communist witch hunting and their founder’s “discovery” of an awesome new theory which absolved them of their responsibility to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack and allowed them to condemn Soviet armies fighting American imperialism in Korea as “Soviet Imperialism.”

Yeah. All that shit is totally irrelevant, dudes. All that matters is that the Soviet bureaucracy were bad men who did bad things. Anyone who defended the Soviet Union was like, totally some kind of crypto-Stalinist, brah. (Which, by the way, makes Trotsky the biggest crypto-Stalinist of all.)

Incidentally, none of this is theoretical. It’s literally impossible to explain the events of the last 20 years using the state capitalist model.

Modern Day Reformism

I’m going to spare the ISO a further exploration of their history which includes glowing support for the Ayatollah Khomeini, British troops in Northern Ireland, the Mujahideen, and prison guard unions, among other things. I’m more interested in concentrating on their very real and very gross reformism in the here and now. Again- I am not writing an article called “Why I Hate DSA” because the Democratic Socialists of America don’t go around masquerading as revolutionaries, confusing militant workers and radical youth. All the ISO has to do to end my wrath is stop calling themselves something they are not. They are not “international”- they are a group which exists only in the United States, having split with their co-thinkers over not kissing radical Islamist ass enough… or too much. I’m not really sure. Maybe one of their members can help us out. Nor are they “socialists” in any sense that doesn’t torture language. If they change their name to “American Student Liberals” or something more fitting, I’ll be glad to shut the hell up.

Allow us to begin with the ISO’s puzzling support for Ralph Nader. Bona fide socialists have, in the past, supported reformist political formations in elections. However, the ISO completely misunderstands or just doesn’t care about the whys and wherefores. Supporting the Labor Party fifty years ago is not nearly the same thing as supporting the Green Party today. The Labor Party was formed by union militants and funded almost exclusively by working class organizations. Further, the Labor Party were an ostensibly socialist organization. That is to say, they at least in theory called for the abolition of capitalism. The point of voting for the Labor Party was not that they were “better” or “more left” or “represented a break with the Democrats (Liberals in the case of England).” The point of voting for mass ostensibly socialist working class political parties- and again, the Green Party is exactly zero of these things- was to support them, in the words of Lenin, “as a rope supports a hanged man.” Put more directly, socialists supported the Labor Party to get them elected and show militant workers that nothing could be accomplished through reformist channels.

Then there’s the fact that Nader’s campaign said absolutely disgusting things on immigration. Things that even consistent, principled progressives would reject out of hand, never mind people running around claiming to be socialists. However, in the final analysis the Green Party and Ralph Nader are far closer to Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party than they are anything resembling a Labor Party. While the craven Stalinists of the CP-USA supported the Wallace campaign, bona fide revolutionary socialists did not. Indeed, the ISO becomes more and more like the CP-USA with each passing year, bleating their “fight the right, build the left” trans-class, watered-down pap.

Hate Socialism, Hate the Working Class

But this is really just part of the broader thrust of the ISO’s attitude toward workers. Basically, they think working class people are just too damn stupid to have socialism explained to them. Forgetting things I have personally overheard- most disgustingly that Southern working class people are “inbred”- there are things like “What We Stand For.” Nowhere in that list are Marxist fundamentals such as The Communist Manifesto (which has the word the ISO are most terrified of in its very title) or Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. While the language can be a little archaic, there’s nothing terribly difficult about reading either of these immensely powerful and highly relevant tracts on socialism. Nor does the ISO push easily readable works by such real life working class people like Eugene Debs or James P. Cannon. What does the ISO recommend people read? Dumbed down “interpretations” of Marxism from their own tendency. Don’t give workers something to read and figure out on their own. No. Read something for them and explain it in the most puerile and childish fashion possible. No wonder the ISO has always languished on college campuses, unable to establish any base within the working class, ever. Note the ratio of college towns to working class hubs in their list of chapters.

Building Illusions, Not the Left

I have problems with the term “the left” when used by socialists. For my own part, I don’t wish to be a part of “the left.” I wish to be part of a revitalized and reinvigorated working class movement. But let’s not quibble over terms. Let’s talk about the International Socialist Organization in action.

I’d like to begin with this disgusting little piece where the ISO urges Barack Obama to read more. Hey dumb fucks- Barack Obama has an Ivy League education. He’s totally aware of the shit sandwich that working class people have to eat every day. He doesn’t need his consciousness raised, because he clearly doesn’t care and even if he did Marxism says that he can’t do anything about it as the head of the capitalist state. Almost as disgusting is their address of left-bourgeois nationalist Hugo Chavez as “Comrade President.” But that’s the ISO for you. Tail after anything that moves, especially if it’s popular on a college campus. Don’t draw clear class lines and provide sharp analysis. That’s like, totally sectarian.

Then there’s their mis-named annual conference called “Socialism.” Moar liek “Reformism” amirite? Read their article on it which, without the slightest trace of shame, reports on Amy Goodman and writers for The Nation speaking at a conference ostensibly devoted to socialism. Check out the schedule for Socialism 2009 which has all kinds of workshops on any manner of identity politics you can think of not to mention entirely frivolous workshops for the politically unserious, and all manner of capitulation to opportunism but only one which features the words “working class”- and that one was largely focused on giving left cover to the ANC.

Indeed, the ISO isn’t even in the business of doing what they say they do- “building the left.” What they spend most of their time doing is providing left cover for reactionary and bourgeois forces that are “on the left” in only the most shallow and impressionistic manner possible.

A Final Thought: On “Sectarianism”

The response of the ISO (and really any opportunist) on drawing clear class and political lines is to mindlessly and automatically bleat charges of “sectarianism.” You see, the ISO sees the role of socialists to tail after anything that moves and not to provide leadership. Refusing to chase after any “movement” is roundly chastised as being “sectarian” and “standing outside the movement.” Specifically, the movement which I support politically has been derided as “sectarian” a number of times for not “liking” unions (as if a political stance on the nature of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy was somehow like a middle school lunch room) and not “getting involved in struggle.” Nothing else really is needed to point out the essentially opportunist, trans-class, and movementist nature of the International Socialist Organization. However, to anyone susceptible to such nonsense, I counter that the Workers’ League (predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party) routinely did paper sales outside of factories and mine shafts when the ISO and the rest of the fake left were running for cover on college campuses. To this day, the SEP devotes more column inches to covering actual working class fights than any other left organization of which I am aware. The ISO’s constant accusations of “sectarianism” against any group which refuses to chase after anything that moves cuts to the heart of the bankruptcy of their politics. What they cannot fight politically, they smear with emotionally charged nonsense, frequently echoing old Stalinist rhetoric they aren’t even aware of.

Which brings us back to the beginning. The International Socialist Organization is not a socialist group. It is a reformist organization, oriented toward middle class radical liberals and students. It makes no attempt at educating its cadre in bona fide Marxist theory, because these cadres would quickly realize that the ISO has nothing to do with socialism or working class politics. I challenge all members of the ISO reading this and their supporters to counter the things I have said with facts and ideas, rather than the base name-calling that they generally direct at anyone with the audacity to have politics not palatable to middle class liberals.

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